


Gift-Bringer

by flutterflap



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Candy Canes, Case Fic, Ella makes a cameo, F/M, Lucifer hates Christmas, Maybe - Freeform, Reveal, Santa is Real, Sort Of, The Winter Holiday Potluck Fic Fest, christmas gifts, fluffy holiday fic, tacky mall decorations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 03:38:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13205067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flutterflap/pseuds/flutterflap
Summary: My entry for the Winter Holiday Potluck Fic Fest! My prompts were:- Lucifer stealing every candy cane Chloe gets before she even gets a taste- the murder of a mall Santa, interviewing other mall Santa's and one says he is the actual Santa...





	Gift-Bringer

Lucifer dropped into the chair beside Chloe’s desk, took the candy cane she had just started to unwrap out of her hand, and popped it into his mouth. “I love this time of year,” he declared, licking the candy suggestively. He was wearing a headband with brown plush antlers on it. A red pocket square stuck out of his pocket, artfully arranged.

Chloe narrowed her eyes at him, her expression somewhere at the intersection of annoyed, amused, and surprised. She took another candy cane from the mug on her desk. “Really? I’d’ve thought you’d hate it.”

He grinned. “What’s not to like?” he asked, gesturing expansively. “Pagan symbols everywhere, all the candy I can eat, and humans engaging in two of my three favorite sins. It’s a Devil’s playground.” He crunched on a piece of candy cane and grinned. “Also, my brother hates it.”

“Amenadiel?” She raised an eyebrow.

“No, Yeshua. It’s not even his real birthday, and everyone _claims_ to be honoring his teachings but all your capitalist machinery has gone merrily on its way making it all about greed and gluttony and Santa. He usually spends the day whinging about how everyone’s missing the point.” His grin flashed again, his eyes twinkling. “There’s a whole section of Hell devoted to people who commit murder in a shopping frenzy.”

“How . . . jolly,” Chloe muttered. She chose to ignore his Luciferness and said, “Speaking of Santa, we have a case. A mall Santa got murdered.”

“Ooh, lovely. That we have a case, not that Santa got murdered,” he added quickly. “I like Santa.”

“Uh huh.” She pushed back her chair.

“You know the myth of Father Christmas originates with the Norse god Odin and the Wild Hunt?” he called, hurrying after her out of the precinct. “Dad _loves_ that,” he went on as they got in the car. “So does Saint Nicholas, the twat. His legacy was meant to be charity to the poor, and he’s stuck with a fat man at the north pole who gives out cheap trinkets.”

Chloe slanted a sideways glance at him, trying to decide how serious he was being. “ _Some_ good comes this time of year,” she said. She had her own mixed feelings about the season, but she couldn’t help but be drawn in by the warmth and excitement that came with it.

“Such as?”

She shrugged. “Season of giving, and all that? Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men? People trying to look out for each other, appreciating family?”

He snorted. “Oh, yes, families sniping at each other around the table and a lot of one and done charity work. My sanctimonious brother _loves_ that, too. Especially when you all forget about it the rest of the year. That’s the true spirit of Christmas.” 

His voice took on an edge that warned Chloe from pressing any further, and they drove the rest of the way to the mall in silence. She’d been working up to inviting him to spend Christmas with her family, if he didn’t have anywhere else to go, but his sudden sourness following his gleeful schadenfreude had her questioning the impulse—at least for the moment. He probably preferred to mark the holiday on his own (or, more likely, in the company of naked strangers and lots of alcohol), but she thought it would be a nice gesture. For all his bravado, she knew he was lonely, and she wanted him to know that she, at least, liked having him around. _Most of the time,_ she thought, as he absently took the candy cane she’d put in the cup holder and peeled the plastic wrapper back. She hadn’t even gotten a taste.

She reached over and plucked the headband from his head and tossed in the backseat as she pulled into a parking space.

“Hey!”

“You can’t wear that to a crime scene,” she said, unbuckling her seat belt. “No one will take you seriously.”

“You never take me seriously,” he grumbled, and crunched on his—no, _her_ —candy cane. 

***

The Christmas decorations at the mall were even worse than Lucifer had anticipated. In addition to all the usual garish displays of trees and garlands and Santa’s winter castle, elves with gossamer wings and creepy, pointed faces hung from the ceiling on fishing wire in a parody of flight, hovering around more Christmas trees that hung suspended in the air while shoppers milled about underneath. Lucifer grinned up at them, some of his good cheer mended. Yeshua really did hate all the fuss and materialism the human celebration of his birth had turned into—not to mention it being on a date appropriated from assorted pagan celebrations of the solstice, instead of his _actual_ birthday—but as far as Lucifer was concerned, it served his brother right to be reminded that he wasn’t the center of the universe. If the humans did it with a frenzy to fill the void of their existence with material goods in the futile hope that they would make them happy instead of focusing on his brother’s teachings, so much the better.

The central court of the mall was cordoned off with yellow tape, the mall manager on duty wringing his hands off to one side while the forensics team took pictures and gathered evidence around the body, which lay with his beard trailing in a burbling fountain. 

“How long is this going to take?” the manager was asking a uniformed officer as they approached. “This is the biggest shopping week of the year! We’re going to lose business!”

“I see you have your priorities straight,” Chloe observed. She pulled her jacket aside to display her badge and introduced herself and Lucifer. The manager had the grace to look abashed, if only for a moment. “What can you tell me about the victim?” Chloe asked.

The dead Santa, it transpired, wasn’t employed by the mall at all. It seemed he’d worn the costume in order to deflect attention while he carried out a robbery, and had been pushed or fallen off the balcony during an argument with his partner. The partner had escaped, also in a Santa suit. The manager and the officers who had first arrived on the scene had gathered all the other Santas on shift that morning. Everyone who was supposed to be there was accounted for, and there were no extra Santas in the mix.

Bored with the story, Lucifer wandered over to where Ella was crouching by the victim taking photographs. She beamed when she saw him, bounced to her feet and threw her arms around him. “Don’t you just love the mall at Christmas?” she cried, gesturing to the tacky decorations.“It’s my favorite place,” she went on, without giving him a chance to answer. “Everyone’s so happy, all the kids are lining up to meet Santa . . .” He stifled a snort, and glanced down at the dead man in a Santa suit at their feet. Ella followed his gaze and pressed her lips together, the way Chloe sometimes did when she was disappointed with him. Or her offspring. Or Dan. Or anyone, really. He didn’t care if the detective was disappointed with him. Ella scowled. “I mean, shame on this guy, for using the spirit of Christmas to steal, ya know?” She crouched back down to snap a few more pictures.

“Yes, shame on him,” Lucifer agreed. “No one cares about _things_ on this vastly commercial holiday.”

Ella rolled her eyes. “It’s the season of _giving_ , Lucifer! In all kinds of ways.”

“Mmm, yes, I’m quite giving on Christmas,” Lucifer admitted with a saucy grin. “As I am every other night of the year. Just call me Santa.” He winked, and Ella laughed.

“I bet you are, buddy.”

“Lucifer!” Chloe waved him over to a cluster of couches and cafe tables on the other side of the fountain, where several men in red Santa suits had gathered. He joined her at a table and let his mind wander as, one by one, she took down their details and alibis. He still had half a candy cane left from the car, and he dug it out of his pocket and popped it into his mouth, bored. None of these Santas was anything more than a sad man looking to make some extra cash. He let his mind wander, until a snippet of conversation brought his attention back.

“Kringle,” the man sitting across from them said. He was older, and appeared to be sporting his own white beard.

“How do you spell that?” Chloe asked.

“K-R-I-N-G-L-E. And it’s Kris with a ‘K’.” 

Lucifer stared incredulously at him. “Oh, come _on_. Kris Kringle?” He turned to the detective. “Surely you don’t believe that’s his real name.”

She gave him a quelling glance, punctuating it with a kick under the table.

“Ow!” He rubbed his shin with his foot. “What was that for?”

She ignored him. “Apologies for my partner, Mr. Kringle. He can be a little . . .”

“That’s quite all right, my dear. I get it all the time.” His eyes actually _twinkled_ when he smiled. “Not everyone gets the true spirit of Christmas. And it _is_ my real name.” He dug into his pocket and produced his driver’s license, which did, indeed, say _Kris Kringle._

Lucifer huffed and sat back in his chair, crossing his arms. “The true spirit of Christmas is annoying the living hell out of my brother,” he said.

The old man chuckled. Chloe rolled her eyes and finished taking down his details. Lucifer lingered after she had finished, caught somewhere between annoyance and fascination. He leaned on the table and scrutinized him.

“You don’t _really_ think you’re Santa, do you?” he asked. “Because I know Saint Nicholas, and you’re definitely not him.” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously and peered into the man’s face. “Are you?”

The old man gave a deep belly laugh. “I’m no saint. But my name _is_ Kris Kringle, and I _am_ Santa.”

“Yes, I saw your driver’s license. Were you _born_ Kris Kringle? Do you squeeze down chimneys?”

“Don’t be silly, young man. I changed my name, and who has a chimney anymore?”

Lucifer blinked and sat back, baffled. “But . . . _why_?”

The old man raised a knowing eyebrow. “Were you born Lucifer Morningstar?”

“Well . . . no, but—”

“Why did you change _your_ name?”

Flustered, Lucifer avoided the man’s gaze. He fidgeted. “It . . . wasn’t who I was anymore. It wasn’t mine.”

“Well, there you go.” Kris Kringle thumped the metal table between them with satisfaction. “I also chose my name to reflect who I am.”

“A hermit who makes toys at the north pole?” Lucifer asked dubiously.

Kringle laughed, nearly—but not quite—a _ho ho ho._ “The gift-bringer. I can be that at any time of the year.” He reached across the table and patted Lucifer’s arm, smiling gently now. “So tell me, Lightbringer. What would you like for Christmas?”

Lucifer stiffened. “I don’t need anything.” Nothing about the man suggested he was anything but human—a mad, strange human—except that he had just called him Lightbringer. _Lots of people know that name,_ he told himself. _It was a play on words, nothing more. Gift-bringer, Lightbringer. He probably studied Latin. You don’t know him._ Besides, he of all people should know, there was no such thing as Santa.

Another laugh. “I didn’t ask you what you needed, my boy, I asked you what you _wanted._ ”

Without his consent, Lucifer’s gaze strayed to Chloe, now deep in conversation with Ella on the other side of the court. “I have everything I want,” he said, and it wasn’t a lie, not really, but the words felt hollow on his tongue.

Kringle followed his gaze. “Perhaps,” he said gently, “if there is no gift you want to receive, there is one you want to give?”

Lucifer glanced sharply at him. His throat was too tight for him to answer, even if he had wanted to.

***

To Chloe’s surprise, Lucifer accepted her invitation for Christmas dinner, and even seemed to enjoy himself—alternating between charming Penelope, ribbing Dan, and arguing with Maze about something she couldn’t follow. He joined them for Monopoly in front of the fireplace (producing the shoe piece from his pocket when he thought no one was looking), and lingered while Chloe tucked Trixie into bed. She found him staring into the fireplace when she tiptoed out of her daughter’s room, a tumbler of whiskey in one hand, the other tucked into his pocket. 

He glanced up when he heard her step, and reached for another tumbler he’d set on the coffee table. “Nightcap?” he asked, offering it to her.

“Thanks.” She took it and joined him beside the fire, enjoying the warmth on her legs. Everyone else had left, Maze to go to what she termed “a real party” as soon as Monopoly had wrapped, Dan and Penelope to go home after kissing Trixie goodnight, leaving them alone in the apartment.

Lucifer picked up a long, narrow box from the mantle that Chloe hadn’t noticed before. “Merry Christmas, Detective,” he said, handing it to her.

Chloe smiled, warmth blooming in her at the unexpected gift. “Lucifer, you didn’t have to.” She hadn’t expected anything, given his diatribes about the fraudulent holiday season. It had been enough that he had agreed to come to dinner. She hefted it, trying to guess what was inside. It was so light it might have been empty, but she heard the faint sound of something shifting inside when she moved it.

“I know,” he said, and was it her imagination, or did he look nervous? His smile was genuine, but there was a tightness around his eyes, and his fingers were tight around the glass in his hand. He took a gulp of whiskey and nodded toward the box. “Go on, open it.”

“Okay.” Chloe set her drink back on the mantle and gently lifted the lid. Inside lay a white feather, bright against the black cardboard. Puzzled, Chloe lifted it out. It was huge, longer than her forearm, and gently curved. In the dim light of the fire and the Christmas tree it seemed go glow faintly from within. Chloe ran a finger along the shaft, up the soft barbs along each side. It felt real, but she couldn’t imagine the bird it could have come from.

She looked at Lucifer, who was watching her with an unreadable expression on his face. His glass was empty. “It’s beautiful,” she said, turning it. “What is it?”

“The truth, Detective,” he said. 

She frowned. “I don’t understand. The truth about what?”

“Me.” He took a deep, shaky breath and set his empty glass on the mantle. “I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time. I’ve been _trying_ to tell you, Det—Chloe,” he amended. “I wanted to show you who I really am, because you deserve to know, but . . . when I tried, I couldn’t. I can’t, it’s . . . well.” He fell silent for a moment and chewed his lip. Chloe waited, her heart pounding, her mind somehow racing and blank at the same time. He took another breath and nodded to himself. “I can’t show you my true face, so this will have to suffice.” He stepped back, well away from the tree and the fire, and Chloe understood where the feather in her hand had come from.

“You . . .” she breathed, her eyes tracing the lines of softly glowing white that rose from his shoulders. He made a sound, something almost like a whimper, and she looked back at his face. His jaw was clenched, his mouth pressed into a tight line. His nostrils flared with his breath. “Lucifer?” She took a step forward, reaching for him.

He didn’t move. When she got close enough, she reached up and cupped his cheek in her hand. “Hey. Are you okay?”

He blinked down at her, his expression relaxing into surprise and then an unsteady laugh. “I think I’m supposed to be asking you that.”

She looked at the white wings that arched above them. “You’re an angel,” she said, wonder making her voice soft.

“I’m the Devil, Detective. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all this time. What I tried to show you, but . . .” He touched his cheek. “Something’s happened, my true face is gone, or—or hidden, or . . . something.” He shook his head. “In any case, since I’m stuck with these for the moment”—he flapped a little, bumping the table behind him—“I might as well make use of them. It’s past time you knew the truth.”

Chloe couldn’t help it; she started to laugh. She should have been running for the hills, with Trixie in tow, but the image of him standing there in her living room, puffed up like an angry cat and trying not to knock anything over with the enormous angel wings that had sprouted from his back, was so ridiculous she had to sit down, she was laughing so hard.

He frowned. “What’s so funny?”

Chloe choked a little and wiped her eyes. “Nothing. You. All of this.” She gestured. “You’re—”

“The Devil, yes.”

Chloe shook her head and started to laugh again. She covered her mouth with her hand to stifle it. 

The wings vanished and he sat down beside her. “Detective,” he said urgently, taking her hand. “I’ve been trying to show you, but I couldn’t, and then I didn’t know how—”

“So it’s all real?” she interrupted.

“What?”

“God, Heaven, Hell? Adam and Eve, the apple?” She sat up straighter and leaned in, aware that she was a dangerous combination of drunk and giddy with shock. She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. _”Santa?”_

“Nnnno,” he said. “The rest, yes, but there’s no Santa. As far as I know.”

“So Kris Kringle?”

“Is just a strange person who decided to name himself after Santa Claus,” he confirmed. After another moment he said, grudgingly, “Though he did have some annoyingly insightful things to say.”

“Like what?” Chloe asked, curious now. She knew he had stayed behind to talk to him after she had completed her interview, and he’d been uncharacteristically quiet the rest of the day afterwards, but she hadn’t had much time to wonder in the whirlwind of holiday preparations in the week since.

He shrugged, then nodded toward the feather she was still holding. “That was his idea, in a way,” he said.

Chloe followed his gaze. “Can I keep it?” she asked.

“Of course. It was a gift, Detective. Chloe,” he amended, using her name for the second time that night. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

She sat back into the cushions and pulled her knees up to her chest, turning the feather over in her hands. A gift, a piece of himself. An odd sense of warmth and calm had settled over her in the wake of her laughing fit. She looked back at her partner—angelic and devilish by turns, though he’d never admit to the former. “I am, actually. Strangely.” She studied his face, seeing what she hadn’t wanted to before, or hadn’t let herself: the strain around his eyes, the tired set of his shoulders. “What about you?” she asked, knowing the answer. He wasn’t all right, she thought; he hadn’t been for awhile. And she hadn’t let herself see.

“I thought you’d be afraid, or—or angry,” he said. 

Chloe shook her head, reaching for his hand again. “I couldn’t be afraid of you, Lucifer.” She grinned at him. “Any more than I could be afraid of Santa.”

He gave a grudging laugh at that.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Chloe said. She gave his hand a little shake. “Are _you_ all right? Because you’ve been . . . off. I should have asked sooner, but I’ve been . . . well, I guess I’ve been a little off, too.” 

“Angry with me, I think you mean,” he said.

“A little,” Chloe admitted. “Maybe a lot. I still don’t understand . . .” She trailed off and shook her head. Why he’d left, why he’d retreated back to his partying, though she had a few ideas, now. “There are things we need to talk about. I have questions. But right now, about this . . .” She held up the feather. “I’m not angry with you. And I’m not afraid of you.”

He looked from her face to the feather and back, studying her for a long moment. Eventually he dropped his gaze to his hands, resting on his knees, and took another deep breath, steadier than before. “Then, right now,” he said, “about this . . . I’m all right, Detective.” After a beat, he added, “Thank you.”

Impulsively, she leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Merry Christmas, Lucifer,” she said, and settled against him.

He stiffened for a moment, then relaxed, his arm settling around her shoulders. “Merry Christmas, Chloe.”

She smiled and turned the feather in the firelight. “See?” She said, unable to resist ribbing him. “It isn’t such a bad holiday.”

He let out an annoyed huff. “Don’t give my brother more reason to be smug, please.”

She laughed, and after a moment, so did he.


End file.
